Preparing For A Long Road Trip-Our Style

From Virginia

To Florida

Recently we went to Florida to visit with family and friends. We were especially excited to see and stay with my younger brother Micah, my sister-in-law Kayla, and my sweet nephew Canon. We haven’t seen them in a year so it was great to get to spend a week with them. We got to celebrate three birthdays while we were there. Kayla’s dad, James and I share the same birthday, August 30 (he’s just a wee bit older than me, oh you know only by like 19 years). We also got to celebrate Canon’s second birthday. I’ll tell you what, that boy just melts my heart. He and the farm kids look a lot alike, I could’ve just brought him home with us and passed him off as my own. I don’t think his mommy and daddy would like that very much though.

Taking such a long trip with eight people requires a lot planning and preparation. It requires even more planning and preparation when you don’t eat fast food, processed food (food like substances as I like to call them), or conventionally raised foods.

To start getting ready for our trip the first thing I did was make a list in my super awesome teacher’s notebook. I’m not really sure what a “teacher’s notebook” is but it sounded good enough in my head to justify buying it. Who am I kidding? Who needed more justification than the fact that it had farm animals on it? But I digress, back to getting ready for the trip. I made my list and laid it on the table and looked at it for two days thinking that I had so much to do and I’d better start working. When I had just two days left before leaving, panic set in and I started working on my list. Working well under pressure is my super power.

My “Teacher’s Notebook”

I washed all of our potential clothing items for the trip. After they were all washed I folded them and stacked them on the table in piles seperated by who they belonged to. I set aside everything we didn’t need to take and made sure everyone had everything they needed. I then packed up our clothes into our suitcases and backpacks. When the packing was done it took a large suitcase, a small suitcase, a duffel bag, two backpacks, a toiletry bag, and a shoe bag to hold it all. That’s a lot of stuff. Good thing we only had to pack for a week.

Clothes for the trip

We planned our meals that we would eat while in Florida ahead of time. My parents were already in Florida and would be staying for the time we were there. My mom and Kayla took a trip to Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods to get most of the grocery items we would need while there. We brought four of our homegrown chickens, two gallons of fresh milk, several dozen fresh eggs, and two watermelons from our garden. We also brought coconut oil, Demerara sugar, and some spices along with us.

Homegrown chickens

Fresh milk

We also had to prepare our food for the drive. I am so thankful that my girls love to cook and are getting quite good at it. Emma is almost ten and Kylie is eight. Emma makes the best biscuits from scratch. She made biscuits while Farmer Derek fried sausage patties for our breakfast on the road. The girls also made cinnamon muffins and chocolate chip cookies. I made bread and sliced it for good ol’ fashioned PB&J sandwiches for our lunch. I also popped a whole bunch of non-gmo organic popcorn to snack on. We were well fed for our drive down.

We used one large cooler, one small cooler, and box to take all of our food in. We took the backseat out of our twelve passenger van to fit everything in. We had two grownups in the front seats, the three girls (one in a car seat) on the second row, the three boys (two in car seats) on the third row, and the back packed with luggage and coolers. From nose to tail our van was full.

Van packed full from nose to tail.

Though we like to limit the farm kids media intake I was grateful for our DVD players in the van. fourteen and half hours was a long time for the kids to ride in a vehicle. Seriously, fourteen and  half hours was a long time for me riding in a vehicle.

We started out our trip with Farmer Derek praying for safety while traveling. We had  pleasant, uneventful drive to Florida. The Farm Kids watched episodes of Liberty Kids, Wild America, Homestead Blessings, Veggie Tales, and the movie Frozen. We also sang Jesus Loves Me per Jeremiah’s request. I’ll be back later with more on our visit…………………………..